"A different language is a different version of life" - Fellini
I agree completely. And I would certainly agree that learning to think in Math/Biology/Evolution is just as important as learning to think in French.
Slightly related, one of the reasons I love English so much is that there are so many words and the creation of new words is not discouraged. There are an enormous amount of ways to describe how a thing is or how we feel and I think a certain level of expressiveness is very important for doing good work.
By the same token, knowing the language of say evolution or math - knowing all the terms and how to describe what's going on - can be just as important for say visual or program design as knowing the more 'industrial' words.